Recovery failure

I apologize for the long post, but I thought having all the steps I went through might be helpful.

Yesterday one of the disks in my RAID 0 C drive failed (I admit that RAID 0 might not be a good idea, but I'd like to concentrate on solving my problem now). Forturnately (I thought) I had a True Image full disk image from earlier in the day. The backup was made with the latest build (3854) of True Image 9 home under XP Professional SP2. The backup consisted of a full backup and 2 incremental backups on an external hard drive.

I replaced the failed drive and booted from the recovery media. I tried the full version, but I got a black screen that included "kernel bug". The safe version started, but when I selected the last incremental it said that it was not a valid True Image Home archive. When I selected the full backup it said that I needed to select the last volume of the archive.

I next installed the same version of True Image home on another computer. It recognized all 3 files as valid, so I decided that the problem was in the version of True Image on the recovery media. I added another hard drive to the computer that had the problem and installed XP Pro SP2 on it and then installed the same version of True Image. It doesn't recognize any of the files as valid archives. I moved the external drive back to the second computer and it still recognizes all three files. I didn't rename any of the files and the external drive has the same drive letter on both computers.

Questions:

1) What would cause three different instances of True Image to have three different opinions of the validity of the archive files? Especially when two of them are theoretically the same version of the program.

2) If I buy a support incident, what kind of response can I expect? The web site doesn't state any support hours or make any promises about response time that I can find. I don't have the time to wait for a business day and then go through several rounds of email.

3) A possible workaround might be to move one of the hard drives to the computer that does recognize the archives and do the restore on that computer. However, I would not be able to restore to the RAID volume. I'm willing to give up on RAID, but will TI restore to a smaller volume? and will it be bootable when I move it back to the computer with a problem?

I'd appreciate any information from someone who's had experience with any of these issues.

I have to say that I'm pretty disappointed that the one time that I tried to use True Image for it's advertised purpose, it failed completely. I guess another question would be if Ghost works any better?

 

It appears that the Recovery CD which runs Linux doesn't support your motherboard very well. The problem may be just with the USB chipset. That isn't uncommon.

First, disconnect all other USB devices from the computer so that only the USB hard drive is connected. Second, conntect the drive to a rear USB port. (The longer internal cable to reach the front ports can cause errors.) Check again whether the backups are reported as bad.

An alternative to the USB connection to successfully restore your system would be to remove the hard drive from the USB case and install it as an internal drive. If you can then verify the image and restore it, you have a solution. Installing a PCI USB 2 card with an NEC chipset (Adaptec PCI cards are one choice.) could provide another solution, but that adds cost.

Another possibility is that you have a memory problem. Run Memtest (Google for it.). Is your system over-clocked? Both of these can cause invalid image problems.

OK, under Windows, the USB chipset performs well, and that's not uncommon. At least you know you have a good backup. Good detective work.

Well, that would be a bit further down on my list of options, but it's a possibility. Just be sure the restore is done from the Recovery CD, and remove the drive before booting into Windows on the machine where you did the recovery.

On this forum, the answer would be NO. On an unbiased basis, the answer might be buy it and try it, but I haven't liked Ghost since Symantec bought PowerQuest right after they brought out a dud version of DriveImage.

It might help if you identify the hardware (brand, motherboard, USB chipset, etc.) and any nonstantard settings on your computer that is having the problem.

 

Note that one neat way of working around such issues caused by the recovery cd is to use Bart PE with the TI plugin installed. This allows you to boot into a pucker Windows environment where you can run the Windows version of TI to carry out a recovery.

F.

 

I did manage to get my disk restored. I removed a 300 GB disk from a 3rd computer and installed it in the computer that was able to read the archive and restored the archive to it. I then did another backup to another external hard drive and I was then able to restore it to the RAID array on the computer that was having the problem (running under Windows on a copy of XP installed on another disk).

In the end I was able to restore everything and it all appears to be working. It still doesn't leave me with a very secure feeling about using TI in the future. What would someone without a spare computer, 2 spare internal hard drives, 1 spare external drive, and a couple of days do? Once I got an archive that was readable it took less than an hour to do the actual restore (about 75GB), but this whole process took over 2 days (no, I wasn't working on it the whole time, it's just a function of how much frustration I could take at one sitting).

I still don't know what the original problem was (i.e. the computer that created the archive wasn't able to read it back, but another computer could, using the same version of TI). At the very least, I think I'll avoid incremental backups in the future.

 

Hello AlecS,

Thank you your interest in Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Please note that backup validation is a precise process, and even one altered bit will result in archive recognized as not valid. If a computer has faults in memory or data transfer cables, that is most likely the reason for backups being reported corrupted. That is why jmk94903 advised you to use rear USB port and check your memory for errors.

When you purchase Acronis Per Incident Support, you are eligible to contact Acronis Priority Support at any time (no specified hours). You will be able to contact Acronis Priority Support via telephone and dedicated email, which will be answered within 2 hours. You can learn more about Acronis Per Incident Support at our official website.

Acronis True Image 9.0 Home can restore a partition/disk image to a disk in case the uncompressed data size of the image is less than the size of destination disk. The resulting drive will be an exact copy of the imaged drive, except free space amount. Notice that when you restore a system partition to the new drive, you need to restore MBR as well. Also notice that if resulting system drive will have too little or no free space, it may become unbootable.

Please try booting with "acpi=off noapic" parameter as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

If that does not help:
Please provide us with the exact vendor and model of the RAID controller you use, create Acronis Report as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

Please also create Linux system information (sysinfo.txt) as described in this post.

Then submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files and information to your request and we will help you solve the problem.

You could also try to use a special plug-in for the BartPE instead of the standalone version. This plug-in allows you to use Windows drivers for the RAID array when running Acronis True Image from BartPE bootable CD.

Thank you.
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Marat Setdikov